Professional Development Committee
Minutes
February 26, 2015 – 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
OAB-112
Meeting Called to Order: 1:02 p.m.
Present: Autumn Bell, Laurel Doud, Susi Nitzel, Alan Razee, Ray Sanchez, Lorraine Smith, Tabitha Villalba, Jon Wilson
Absent: Donna Cooper, Don Lopez, Keelin McCabe, Sarah Velasquez, Jenny Xiong
No Quorum Reached
I. Approval of Agenda: (none, no quorum)
II. Approval of Minutes: 11/20/2014 (none, no quorum)
III. Operating Agreement Update: (Informational – No Action Taken)
Classified Senate has approved the revised Operating Agreement. There has been no action taken by Academic Senate, ASG, or Management Council. Susi sent the OA yesterday to the pertinent constituency groups. Since Academic Senate does two reads, it will be at least a month until we hear if our name change is official or not.
IV. Professional Development Email Account: (Informational – No Action Taken)
At our meeting on October 23, 2014, the committee asked Don if he could create an email address for us. The email address is . Susi is going to meet with Debbie Nichols to see about updating the committee webpage with the email address featured prominently.
V. Technology Advisory Committee Training Recommendations: (Discussion/Informational – No Action Taken)
TAC did a faculty technology survey last spring, asking instructors about their skill level and interest in certain technology topics (software and hardware, both instructional and non-instructional, security topics, online gradebooks, office in the cloud). Last semester, TAC analyzed the data and put together a list of training recommendations for both Autumn Bell and Technology Support Services. Autumn briefly went over what she and Jon have been doing in terms of instructional technology training and addressed each of the recommendations.
a. Blackboard – Training is offered on the first and third weeks of every month this semester. They are thinking about phasing it out next semester and do it on an as-needed basis.
b. WebAdvisor – Autumn believes, and TAC agrees, that since WebAdvisor is a function of the District, they should be the ones offering training. However, in the past, it has been a challenge to engage the District in trainings so maybe FCC can take the lead and gently guide them into offering training opportunities. Since the instructional function of WebAdvisor has to do with rosters, grades, dropping students, as well as census verification, perhaps we can enlist Admissions and Records to assist in training. Susi will speak with Frances Lippmann and Pedro Avila to see if they are interested in offering something.
c. Turnitin and Camtasia – There is a workshop scheduled on Camtasia by Rio Waller on March 6 in BE-127 at 1:00. Autumn and Jon had a session on Turnitin scheduled but the presenter had to cancel.
d. Office in the Cloud – Autumn did not think this was necessarily instructional technology. Susi explained that TAC faculty requested Office 365 email account so they could see what their students see. Maybe this is something classified professionals or even this committee can offer.
e. Apple – They have been offering Apple sessions throughout the semester. David Balogh just did one on Doceri and Jeannie Santos is scheduled to do one on the iPad app, Explain Everything on March 20 at 1:00 p.m. in LI-141.
There was a general discussion about the Online Education Initiative (OEI) for California’s Community College System’s choice to award Infrastructure’s Canvas the contract to provide an online course management system and related services to community colleges statewide and what this means for SCCCD.
VI. Student Equity Plan Professional Development: (Discussion – No Action Taken)
The Student Equity Plan has $294,257.00 for professional development. Chris Villa is accepting Action Plans for ideas for activities and will decide what is funded. The committee believes it should either come up with Action Plans of its own or at provide some input into the decision-making. Ideas such as ME First (math and English), using the Leading from the Middle cohorts, bringing in folks from the California Acceleration Project were discussed. Once the Student Equity Coordinator is hired, he or she should be invited to our meetings, maybe even made a member of the committee when we review our Operating Agreement in the fall. In the meantime, Susi will meet with Chris and discuss the role the PDC will have in deciding on equity-based professional development activities. Our OA states we “study and make recommendations for employee training and the expenditure of professional development funds” so we should have some say.
VII. Promotion and Implementation of Professional Development Plan: (Discussion – No Action Taken)
Alan asked what specifically the committee’s role is in terms of professional development. Do we identify activities we believe should be offered? Do we approve ideas? Do we have a say in how funding is spent? If so, then what happens? Tony reinstated the committee in order to centralize professional development but do we have any real say in what is done? Should people and departments be coming to us with professional development ideas and we give our yay or nay or should we be more of an umbrella, where they bring their ideas and we help them with promoting, organizing, and evaluating? A big challenge is most employees say they want professional development but when it is actually offered, few attend. That could be due to scheduling conflicts, lack of interest in topics, or the inability to get away from the office in the case of classified but we need to continue to offer opportunities at different days, times, and in different modalities. Accreditation Standard IIIA: Human Resources specifically mentions appropriate opportunities for professional development and the systematic evaluation of such so the committee certainly does have an important role to play but as of now, that role is still not well-defined. For the time being, we will continue to promote the committee. Mention it in committee meetings when professional development comes up, in conversation with colleagues, wherever and whenever you can. Susi will work with the Public Information Office to see what assistance they can give us. It was suggested we put together a catalogue of speakers to have on hand. FCC is hiring many new employees, both certificated and classified. Maybe we can assist in developing a training program of some sort for them. At the end of each academic year, the committee should prepare a report of all professional development activities that were offered, along with evaluations and how those evaluations were used as a basis for improvement. We can present the report to the constituencies as well as Tony and it would be great evidence for accreditation.
VIII. Other:
IX. Future Agenda Items:
Student Equity Professional Development
Meeting Adjourned: 2:26 p.m.